Sin Loi

He was a full-grown dog when I saw him after the war. My father bought him from a distant uncle who claimed a bemused pedigree of traveling Buddhist monks in his detailed ancestry, and although he was cheap, he doubled his monetary value in activity. My father did not share my early opinion of the dog we later named Sin Loi. He claimed that the dog's endless barking in search of adventure was making his chickens too nervous to lay and his ducks, he said, were skinnier by the day. A guy can get pretty hungry at nine years old but it wasn't till much later that I could really appreciate his argument.

There always seemed to be plenty of rice to eat in those days but as I aged the taste of rice became more and more bland. The dog and I worked the fields when necessary, but as my taste for rice diminished, so did my farming ambitions. As a result, my chores were hastily and painfully overcome and generally around noon, after a quick bowl of rice (at this point, I could no longer taste the rice at all) the two of us would set out on our daily roam.

I say roam because at the beginning, our destination was not an important aspect of the journey. It was the things that happened, the things we saw, or did, that were of value; the destination was incidental.

Our first roam terminated at the cemetery. It was a small cemetery comparable to the size of the village. It sat on the north perimeter of the village and beyond it the jungle thickened. It was not entirely safe in those days to venture beyond one's work in the field or one's home town village. There were many foreigners that patrolled the jungles in search of others who also patrolled. They set many traps, both mechanical and human, for each other.

Sin Loi did not know these things. He bid me come, looking back upon me from the other side of the yard, across the short, pale green grass that rose into unmarked mounds and denoted the presence of people, known and unknown to me; captives of the earth. I told him to come but he would not. I pleaded at length. He answered by walking briskly, head high, defiant in the jungle. For a small dog in a hungry country, it was a bad place to be alone.

The sun's reflecting glare saw me squatting by the road watching my peers calling to the passing trucks of foreigners, arms outstretched, fingers spread, for food. Sometimes, in kindness it seemed, the cans of food would fall with slow arching momentum to the ground at the children's feet; but often the children played the soldiers game. Kindness was not part of the game, unless one considers its presence significant in those children, unaware of the rules who found their bodies bruised, their faces bleeding from a can, thrown fast and angrily from a passing truck. The ones that ate the most knew the game. I often think they knew the faces of the ones that played the game and when they saw them they took for cover, much like the soldiers do, and shielded their faces from the barrage that followed.

Between the trucks, the flooded paddies mirrored the life of the village and I was lonesome. The dog I knew, was in great peril. I was nine and could only surrender once that I had, alone, ventured to any great distance from my village.

Despite my general fear (for I knew nothing specific to fear), I thought that because the dog was indeed my friend it was my obligation to be there at the time of his need. But the danger kept me on the south side of the cemetery when I returned there, in a fit of conscience. With the rising mounds between me and the opening to the jungle, I waited.

It was when the supper fires had cooked the rice soft in every hut that he came; head low, eyes alert. He came to the opening and stopped to look at my squatting figure. His black and brown fur glistened with moisture and his face was drawn in fatigue. He did not recognize me until I called his name, "Sin Loi." He came slowly, listlessly but with every step he seemed to gain back his youth and by the time he was to me, he was jumping and licking at my face.